2015 Sidney Myer Creative Fellows

Martin Del Amo

Martin is a Sydney-based choreographer and dancer. He started out as solo artist, acclaimed for his full-length solos fusing idiosyncratic movement and intimate storytelling. In recent years, Martin has also built a strong reputation as creator of group works and solos for others. His Helpmann Award-winning Anatomy of an Afternoon, which premiered at the Sydney Opera House in the 2012 Sydney Festival, was presented with great success at Southbank Centre in London last year.

Marieke Hardy

Marieke Hardy is a writer, producer, curator and artist. She has penned regular columns for The Age, The Monthly, and Frankie. Her six-part award-winning ‘black romantic comedy series’, Laid, premiered on the ABC in 2010. She is co-curator of international ‘literary phenomenon’ Women of Letters and a regular panellist on ABC’s The Book Club. A collection of her essays was released through Allen and Unwin in 2011. She is an emerging live artist and immersive theatre creator.

Harry Angus

Harry James Angus is a Melbourne-based musician and composer, best known as the trumpet playing co-frontman/singer in The Cat Empire. His longstanding mission has been to act as an ambassador for culturally diverse musical forms and improvised performance in the musical mainstream. He is also the co-creator of the ARIA-nominated cult psychedelic band Jackson Jackson, the free-improvisation ensemble known as The Conglomerate, and a varied and voracious solo artist and collaborator.

Lawrence English

Lawrence English is composer, media artist and curator based in Australia. Working across an array of aesthetic investigations, English’s work explores the politics of perception and prompts questions of field, perception and memory. English utilises a variety of approaches including visceral live performance and installation to create works that ask audiences to consider their relationship to space, place and experiential embodiment.

Alexis Wright

Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her books include Grog War, a study of alcohol abuse in Tennant Creek, and the novels Plains of Promise, and Carpentaria, which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Victorian and Queensland Premiers’ Awards and the ALS Gold Medal, and was published in the US, UK, China, Italy, France, Spain and Poland. Her most recent novel, The Swan Book, was awarded the ALS Gold Medal for Fiction in 2014, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, the Stella Prize, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the Victorian Premier’s Indigenous Literature Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Award.

Tommy Murphy

Tommy Murphy co-wrote Devil’s Playground for Foxtel/Showcase (winner Logie Most Outstanding Miniseries or Telemovie and AACTA Best Telefeature or Mini Series. He is associate producer and writer for the feature film Holding the Man, which will be released in cinemas nationally on August 27 2015. Murphy is also an award-winning playwright, currently under commission from Black Swan Theatre Company (as winner of the Richard Burton Prize) and for Belvoir.

Timothy Watts

Tim is a multi-award winning performer, deviser, director, puppeteer, improvisor and animator from Perth, Western Australia. He is a founding member of The Last Great Hunt and has a passion for creating and performing original, imaginatively engaging theatre through improvisation and experimentation.

Gabrielle de Vietri

Gabrielle de Vietri’s work is generated through collaboration and is based on encounters between people when they are brought together. Her ideas-driven practice as a visual artist spans a wide variety of media including video, performance, sound, sculpture, text, events and images.

Emily Floyd

Emily Floyd works in sculpture, printmaking and public installation. She explores the history of pedagogical play, employing it as a frame for investigations into literature, information display, typography, protest, and the legacy of modernism. Drawing parallels between educational models and contemporary art, Floyd’s works generate spaces for social engagement and interaction whilst provoking discussions about contemporary social, cultural and political potentiality. Emily is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Courtney Collins

Courtney Collins is a writer who has written plays and a novel, The Burial, which was published in Australia and overseas to great acclaim. The Burial was shortlisted for numerous awards including the inaugural Stella Award and it is now in development as a feature film. Courtney is currently completing her second novel, The Walkman Mix and researching a pilot TV series. She recently relocated to a remote community in Southeast Arnhem Land where she is recording Indigenous artists tell the stories of their paintings.